“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
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Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford "Toni" Morrison was an American novelist and editor. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987). Some of her other notable…
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culture · American novelist and editor (1931–2019) · writer · novelist · librettist · university teacher · poet · children's writer · audiobook narrator · editing staff · young adult author · essayist · also Toni Morrison, Chloe Ardelia Wofford, Chloe Anthony Wofford-Morrison, Chloe Anthony Wofford, Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, Morrison
Born 18 February 1931 · Died 5 August 2019 · Q72334
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2026· 13 entries
“The conceptual connection is the search for the beloved – the part of the self that is you, and loves you, and is always there for you.”
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“s response demonstrated how to keep your integrity and claim your own life in the face of acts of such”
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LEADERSHIP Newspapers: Obama To Host Six-Episode Audible Series Exploring Works By Toni Morrison, James Baldwin
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The Economic Times: Quote of the day by Toni Morrison: 'Make a difference about something other than...' - motivational quote
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The Economic Times: Quote of the day by Toni Morrison: 'Make a difference about something other than...' - motivational quote by Pulitzer prize-winning author of Beloved on living with purpose and ...
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WKNO FM: Picture book biographies introduce children to Toni Morrison and Ruby Bridges | Book of the Day
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Infobae: De Toni Morrison a Cormac McCarthy: Barack Obama apuesta por la literatura en su nuevo podcast
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The Guardian: Jacqueline Crooks: ‘Toni Morrison’s voice made me want to find my own’
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The Guardian: How Toni Morrison blurred the lines between being an editor and a writer
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The Guardian: Six great reads: dating in later life; a lost Amazon van, ‘gong bath’ freezers, and Toni Morrison
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The Guardian: On Morrison by Namwali Serpell review – a landmark appraisal of the great novelist’s work
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The Guardian: ‘She dared to be difficult’: How Toni Morrison shaped the way we think
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2025· 4 entries
The Guardian: Toni at Random by Dana A Williams review – Toni Morrison’s editing years
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Yahoo: Toni Morrison Originally Wanted to Publish Under a Different Name
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Essence: “And She Was Loved”: New Children’s Book Celebrates Toni Morrison’s Impact And Legacy
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The Guardian: How Toni Morrison’s characters modeled womanhood and confinement in their dress
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2024· 1 entry
Bustle: 14 Black Writers Pay Tribute To Toni Morrison
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2023· 2 entries
NPR: Toni Morrison's diary entries, early drafts and letters are on display at Princeton
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Essence: Toni Morrison’s Creative Process Is Explored In New Revelatory Exhibition At Princeton University
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2021· 2 entries
People: Toni Morrison Was a 'Transcendent Fact of Life': Read Author Isabel Wilkerson's Tribute to the Late Writer
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Cornell University opened Toni Morrison Hall, a 178,869 square-foot residence hall alongside an adjacent dining hall in 2022 named Morrison Dining
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2020· 1 entry
And signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine on December 21
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2019· 12 entries
Hyperallergic: Remembering Toni Morrison Through Film
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At the age of 88, from complications of pneumonia
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Died 2019-08-05.
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A resolution was passed in her hometown of Lorain, Ohio, to designate February 18, her birthday, as Toni Morrison Day
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“Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.”
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“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
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“I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.”
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“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
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“Original: «I used to get very annoyed at people who said there were poetic things in my writing. Good prose is poetic.[...] My notion of prose is that it has to have this underground life.”
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Time created 89 new covers to celebrate women of the year starting from 1920; it chose Morrison for 1993
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Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
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“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race’. This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”
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2017· 1 entry
Princeton University dedicated Morrison Hall (a building previously called West College) in her honor
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2016· 2 entries
Time magazine noted that Playing in the Dark was among Morrison's most-assigned texts on U
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Oberlin College received a grant to complete a documentary film begun in 2014, The Foreigner's Home, about Morrison's intellectual and artistic vision, explored in the context of the 2006 exhibition she guest-curated at
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2015· 2 entries
In which Morrison talked to Alan Yentob about her life and work
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“I felt very powerfully patriotic when I went to the inauguration of Barack Obama. I felt like a kid.”
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2014· 1 entry
Awarded Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (2014).
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2013· 2 entries
Awarded PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award (2013).
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Won The Nichols-Chancellor's Medal (2013).
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2012· 3 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Barack Obama (2012).
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Responded to a question about the difference between black and white feminists in the 1970s
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It is the story of a Korean War veteran in the segregated United States of the 1950s who tries to save his sister from brutal medical experiments at the hands of a white doctor
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2011· 2 entries
Awarded Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction (2011).
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Morrison worked with opera director Peter Sellars and Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré on Desdemona, taking a fresh look at William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello
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2010· 4 entries
Aged 45, when Morrison's novel Home (2012) was half-completed
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When Morrison was halfway through writing her novel Home
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Awarded Carl Sandburg Literary Award (2010).
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Later explaining, "I stopped writing until I began to think, He would be really put out if he thought that he had caused me to stop
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2009· 1 entry
Awarded Norman Mailer Prize (2009).
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2008· 2 entries
Awarded New Jersey Hall of Fame (2008).
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“People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.”
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2007· 2 entries
Awarded doctor honoris causa from the Paris-Sorbonne University (2007).
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Toni Morrison Elementary School opened in her hometown of Lorain, Ohio
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2006· 1 entry
Morrison held the Robert F
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2005· 1 entry
Awarded Coretta Scott King Award (2005).
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2004· 3 entries
Awarded NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction for Love (2004).
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Put together a children's book called Remember to mark the 50th anniversary of the Brown v
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Morrison was invited by Wellesley College to deliver the commencement address, which has been described as "among the greatest commencement addresses of all time and a courageous counterpoint to the entire genre"
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2003· 1 entry
Awarded honorary doctorate from ENS (2003).
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2002· 1 entry
With music by Richard Danielpour, the opera was premièred on May 7, 2005, at the Detroit Opera House with Denyce Graves in the title role
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2001· 1 entry
That Morrison's career experienced the boost of "The Oprah Effect,
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2000· 3 entries
Awarded Library of Congress Living Legend (2000).
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Won National Humanities Medal (2000).
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It sold another 800,000 paperback copies
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1998· 1 entry
The movie adaptation of Beloved was released, directed by Jonathan Demme and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, who had spent ten years bringing it to the screen
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1996· 3 entries
Awarded Jefferson Lecture (1996).
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Television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey selected Song of Solomon for her newly launched Book Club, which became a popular feature on her Oprah Winfrey Show
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The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U
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1993· 4 entries
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.
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Awarded honorary doctorate from the University of Paris-VII (1993).
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Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (1993).
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Dedicated to scholarly research of Morrison's work
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1992· 1 entry
Morrison also published her first book of literary criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), an examination of the African-American presence in White American literature
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1989· 2 entries
Awarded Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1989).
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Career landmark: Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities (1989).
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1988· 5 entries
Awarded Helmerich Award (1988).
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Awarded American Book Awards for Beloved (1988).
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Awarded Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards for Beloved (1988).
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Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved (1988).
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Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987)
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1987· 2 entries
“I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither. I really do. So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.”
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Morrison published her most celebrated novel, Beloved
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1986· 2 entries
By Capital Repertory Theatre and directed by Gilbert Moses
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“I write for black women. We are not addressing the men, as some white female writers do. We are not attacking each other, as both black and white men do. Black women writers look at things in an unforgiving/loving way. They are writing to repossess, re-name, re-own.”
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1984· 1 entry
Was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany, SUNY
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1983· 1 entry
Morrison left publishing to devote more time to writing, while living in a converted boathouse on the Hudson River in Nyack, New York
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1982· 1 entry
Awarded Ohio Women's Hall of Fame (1982).
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1981· 1 entry
Won Langston Hughes Medal (1981).
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1978· 1 entry
Awarded honorary degree from Spelman College (1978).
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1977· 2 entries
Awarded Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Song of Solomon (1977).
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Awarded National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Song of Solomon (1977).
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1975· 1 entry
Morrison's second novel Sula (1973), about a friendship between two Black women, was nominated for the National Book Award
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1970· 1 entry
When Morrison was aged 39
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1968· 1 entry
Had been shot to death by a transit officer in the New York City Subway
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1965· 2 entries
Morrison began working as an editor for L
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Her second son, Slade Kevin Morrison, was born in 1965; he died of pancreatic cancer on December 22, 2010, when Morrison was halfway through writing her novel Home.
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1961· 1 entry
And she was pregnant with their second son when she and Harold divorced in 1964
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1957· 1 entry
Returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964
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1955· 1 entry
From Cornell University in Ithaca, New York
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1954· 1 entry
That declared racially segregated public schools to be unconstitutional
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1949· 2 entries
Enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D
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Studied at Lorain High School (1949).
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1931· 1 entry
Born 1931-02-18.
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